Chapter Eighteen
Winter
C hristmas came again quickly, the festive lights an unwelcome reminder of everything Gabriel was missing. Time passed and he still hadn’t received a date for his trial.
Mia nibbled her lip and wished she hadn’t agreed to stay late and clean up after the church’s nativity play. The children in their costumes had been adorable, but all she wanted was to go home. She’d taken on a job before Christmas break, something to do to keep her mind busy, and by the end of her days she was tired enough to sleep with fewer dreams.
“You okay?”
She smiled at Lilly, perched in Bryce’s lap now that most of the cleaning duties were done and just the three of them and Kennedy remained. “Christmas is just a little gloomy this year. It’s hard to be alone, especially when everyone else is so happy together.”
“Sorry,” Lilly said. She shifted from Bryce’s knee to the chair beside him, face flustered.
“It’s fine,” Mia assured her. “You don’t have to hide your happiness just because I’m a little lonely.” She picked at a stray thread on the hem of her sweater, unable to look at them.
“You still have a chance,” Kennedy said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leaning her head against Mia’s. “He might get out someday and then you two can make up for all this lost time.”
“I guess we could,” she said. “I want to, it’s just …”
“Just?”
She hesitated, picking at her thread again. They’d never discussed this part of her relationship with Gabriel before. “We talk about it so often and there’s so much expectation . What if he’s disappointed?”
“With you?” Kennedy’s look was puzzled.
“With me and with everything else,” Mia said. It was hard to explain the weight she’d carried and how she had come to fear his release as much as she hoped for it. “What if he gets out and we aren’t happy? What if he doesn’t like being with me?”
“Why wouldn’t he like being with you?” Lilly asked.
“He’s had sex before,” Mia said quickly, trying to get it out before she lost her nerve. “He’s been with a lot of people, and I don’t know anything.” It poured out of her, and she looked at them, swallowing down the vulnerability that sat on her chest, threatening to smother her.
“He was so young when he went to prison,” Bryce said, “I doubt he was with that many people.”
“He was ,” Mia insisted.
“You don’t have to be the first to be the one that matters,” Kennedy reassured her. “He hasn’t complained about anything yet, has he?”
Lilly and Bryce looked at her curiously. “Oh?” Lilly asked. “What has he had to complain about?”
“Just some letters,” Mia bit her lip hard and looked away. “And phone calls.”
“ Sexy phone calls, though, right?” Kennedy asked. “Like we talked about before?”
“Wait, you’ve been having phone sex?” Bryce sat forward, scanning Mia’s face for evidence, and then letting out a low whistle.
“Not exactly,” she hedged. “I mean, he doesn’t have a phone to himself so it’s not really private. And they’re sort of recording the calls, so you never know if someone’s listening.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this,” Lilly said. “You two have been talking for so long now and you never said anything.”
Mia shrugged, keeping her eyes fixed on the bare ring finger of her left hand. “It’s embarrassing,” she admitted. “It’s all we have, all we might ever have, but we’re not married.”
“And you feel guilty,” Lilly said, pinning the source of Mia’s discomfort in a few words.
“Yes.”
“You don’t judge us,” Bryce reminded her, “and we aren’t going to judge you.”
“Absolutely.” Lilly nodded, her hand in Bryce’s. “And when he does get out, you two will do just fine. He isn’t going to be disappointed in you.”
Mia smiled tightly, but the seed of her doubt remained.
Gabriel got the official date on a Tuesday, his world fixing itself to a moment in the summertime that would determine everything about his future … and Mia’s.
She was calmer when he told her than he expected, and he knew she was absolutely focused on making sure he stayed hopeful.
“It’s sooner than we thought,” she said. “This summer! It could have taken another year. That’s a whole year that we don’t have to worry about. We’ve come so far.”
“Every day I spend in here is a day we can’t get back,” he said, the time between him and the trial stretching out like an eternity. So much waiting, so much time lost.
“It’s worth it,” she told him. “Every day that I spend waiting for you is worth it.”
He held tight to those words as he spent days staring at the date and time of the trial finally written down in black and white. He’d never thought he’d have this chance and now he resented it taking so long to arrive. It was selfish, but he’d always been a selfish man. He had hope and Mia and witnesses and still he wanted more. He thought about trying again to call his mother, humbling himself to ask if she’d come.
He didn’t.
Spring
Gabriel was used to Mia’s visits. He still counted the seconds between them, but she had come as often as possible, and he had stopped getting nervous a long time ago. He knew she would be there; knew she would smile at him and link her fingers with his and they would have a few hours where love mattered more than the obstacles they faced.
It was different when her father came.
He followed her to a table and tried to turn his focus to the man who sat beside her. Pastor Anderson looked exactly the way Gabriel had expected him to—neatly dressed, hair combed just the right way, glasses settled sensibly at the bridge of his nose. He didn’t have the same hidden edge of cruelty in his eyes that Richard had always had, and the laugh lines at his eyes seemed genuine, but he still frowned at Mia’s eagerness for Gabriel’s touch, the easy and casual way that she wrapped her hand around his, her fingers slotting comfortably between his own.
She smiled, ignoring the palpable tension in the air as her father stared him down. It was not the way he would have preferred to meet the parent of the woman he loved, but she was insistent that she wanted them to meet before the trial.
“Gabriel, this is my dad,” she said, cutting into the silence and looking from one of them to the other. “Dad, this is Gabriel.”
He reached out a hand and Pastor Anderson took it, giving it a brief, perfunctory shake. “Nice to meet you finally,” Gabriel said, his gaze shifting from the man to the daughter. He knew this was important to her, and his personal feelings about God and religion aside, he wanted to make her happy.
“Mia’s quite fond of you,” her father said in return—an explanation for his presence more than a return of the greeting. “She’s argued very persuasively on your behalf, but I hope you understand that her happiness, her future, is my top priority.”
Gabriel pulled his eyes away from Mia, met the blunt gaze of the man who clearly didn’t approve of him. “She’s everything,” he said flatly. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give, nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”
“And if you have to spend the rest of your life in here?”
“Dad,” Mia said quickly, shaking her head.
“Then I’ll be here for her until she doesn’t want me anymore, but I won’t try to stop her if she decides she wants to move on. What’s between us … it’s for Mia, it’s always been for Mia.”
Pastor Anderson didn’t speak much after that and Gabriel knew he was being judged, his every action evaluated, but he wasn’t worried. He knew every expression that Mia made, every shift in her body language. The subtle flow of unspoken communication in the flick of a glance or the caress of a thumb came as naturally to him as breathing now.
“You really do love her, don’t you?” Pastor Anderson asked. Mia’s seat at the table was empty as she made her customary trip to the vending machine.
“Yes, I really do.”
“You wouldn’t have been my first choice for her, but maybe I would’ve been wrong.” Her dad sighed, casting his eyes heavenward. “She’s never looked at anyone the way she looks at you and it’s obvious her happiness matters to you.”
“She’s my only priority.” Gabriel looked at him, his gaze unflinching. “I mean that.”
“Well, I guess you had better call me Ryan.”
When Mia returned, laughing at the absurdly high mountain of snacks in her arms, there was no tension between them, and when they left, her dad’s handshake was warm and friendly.
“I know you’re soured on God and faith” he said, “and truth be told after what you’ve been through it’s hard to blame you, but I’ll be praying for you, for what it’s worth.”
Gabriel swallowed hard and accepted the gesture for the kindness it was intended to be. “Thanks, I guess it can’t hurt. I heard about what you did for Mia’s friend and you’re a better man than my uncle ever was.”
Mia’s arms around his waist were extra tight when she hugged him goodbye, and he saw the tears she tried to hide as she walked away.
He’d never done anything more important than making sure that the two most important men in her life were united in their understanding of how much she meant to both of them.
Mia shouldn’t have been there, and she knew it. Amy had made it clear that Brittany didn’t want to be contacted, that she had put legal barriers in place to prevent them from asking her for help and Mia had been obedient. She’d closed off the possibility that they could reach Gabriel’s ex-girlfriend for nearly a year, but the date of the trial loomed, large and final and desperate in her mind, until she broke. If there was a chance she could reach Brittany, as she had reached Lilah, it would be worth the consequence she could face for breaking the order.
Brittany’s family was old money, and Mia was surprised when she pulled up to the address in a town several hours away and found the home she lived in was not a mansion, but a quaint two-story house not that different from Mia’s own childhood home. The street was neat and tidy, leaves and flowers barely blossoming in the well-tended yards.
A dog barked inside when she knocked, and then the door opened, and she was standing in the warming spring air and staring with wide eyes at the woman she had come to see. Brittany was a slim brunette with soft features, her looks similar to Mia’s, but her eyes were brown, dark guarded pools that belied her youth.
That look reminded Mia of Gabriel, and the heaviness he carried.
“You’re Brittany,” she blurted, and the other woman smiled slightly in surprise. Mia rushed on before she could speak. “I’m Mia Anderson. You don’t know me, but I was hoping I could have a moment of your time. I’m friends with Gabriel.”
Brittany frowned and crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “I told that private investigator that I don’t want anything to do with this. I have a life now, a husband and a child. I don’t need my past getting pulled out and examined.”
Mia nodded, holding one hand out beseechingly before Brittany could close the door. “I understand that what I am asking is a lot, but all Gabriel wants is a chance at a life.”
Brittany’s eyes narrowed on her face. “A friend, huh?”
Mia blushed, heat rushing painfully over her cheeks. “I love him,” she said honestly. “So much.”
“Yeah?” Brittany flicked a glance at Mia’s face again and then shook her head. “Well, come in then and explain to me how the hell that happened when he’s been in prison for the last thirteen years. I know you weren’t with him when he went in. You look like a baby, and they’d have had your face all over the news if you had been.”
Mia stiffened. “I’m not a baby. I’m twenty-one and I’m in college.”
“Well, aren’t you a fierce little thing? I can see how he’d like you.” Brittany smiled as she settled at the kitchen table, waving a hand for Mia to sit, too. “So?”
Mia took a breath and explained how her relationship with Gabriel had begun, how hopeful she had been when they realized that they might have a chance to actually be together and how hard the past year had been on both of them.
“You really do love him,” Brittany said when she’d finished. “I can see it all over you. I’m glad. He deserves to be loved.”
Mia nodded, nibbling the skin of her bottom lip nervously. “Did you? Love him?”
“As much as I could at fifteen,” Brittany said, but the look in her eyes was haunted, and Mia could see it, the ache that she kept deep inside, the place where there was a wound that still wept. “I was emotional—maybe a bit out of control—as a teenager. I landed at Richard’s and that just made it worse.”
Mia nodded. “He told me about what you all went through.”
Heat flashed in Brittany’s eyes, but she shrugged. “He’s got as much right as any of us to share it, I guess.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like,” Mia said softly, reaching out to lay her hand over the other woman’s. Brittany’s fingers tightened on it, seeking comfort as she confronted memories that they both knew she would’ve preferred to forget. “The truth is that none of that should have happened to you, to either of you, and this is a small chance to help make it right for Gabriel.”
“I told him I hated him, the last time I saw him.” Brittany looked up, a single tear sliding unnoticed down her cheek as she chewed nervously on her thumbnail. “That I would never forgive him for what had been done to me, even though it wasn’t his fault and there was nothing he could have done to stop it.”
They both turned as a small boy clattered down the stairs, arms full of toys. He waved curiously and smiled, one tooth missing in the front, before letting himself out into the backyard through the patio door.
“Gabriel wanted children. Did you know that?” She looked at Mia, shoulders slumped with a sadness that years of distance could not erase. “Even then, as young as we were, he wanted a real family. The kind where love was just given, instead of earned, and you knew they’d always be there for you.”
Mia squeezed her hand, but she didn’t interrupt.
“I love my husband,” Brittany continued, nodding slightly to herself. “I love my son, too, and I wouldn’t undo the life I had to live to get here.” There was a spark in her eyes, the rage that she’s concealed so well until now. “But someone needs to know what that bastard did, and I guess I need to make up for blaming the wrong person all those years ago. Gabriel was just a kid, and he was half mad with grief and rage when he took off. What happened to his dad was a tragedy, but it was probably Richard’s fault more than anyone’s.”
“Will you help him?”
Brittany nodded and Mia breathed a sigh of relief even as her heart ached. Gabriel had loved this woman years before Mia had known him and maybe it wouldn’t have lasted, but what they had made together shouldn’t have been taken from them by force. The unfairness of that, the damage that it had left behind, would never completely heal.
She understood, finally, that even if Gabriel came home any happiness they found together afterward would still be built on the back of someone else’s pain.